Thrift Score Thursday 91

Happy Thursday, friends! It’s good to be back! The time off last week was fantastic, but I still enjoyed scrolling through the #thriftscorethursday feed and keeping up with all the great stuff you guys have been posting.

The Features:

Prepare to swoon! Maggie (@maggieoverbystudios) shared this shot of a garage sale bookcase that she DIYed into the perfect midcentury-inspired display piece for [just a small portion of] her collection of West German pottery pieces. And I can’t get enough of the red + green + blue combo!

And I can’t even believe that Suzanne (@theandersonestate) found this absolutely incredible green onyx lamp on the side of the road! For free! You guys, FREE!!!

I always love finding awesome new Instagram accounts via #thriftscorethursday! Dina (@dinasdays) is a genius at thrifty fashion and I’ve had a blast checking out her beautiful blog where she pulls together super fun outfits with mainly thrifted pieces!

Like this gorgeous look based around a $4 thrifted floral button-up. You’re definitely going to want to give her Instagram a visit!

My Find:

You know how you hear those stories of people stumbling across valuable original pieces by famous artists at the thrift store for pennies?

Yeah.

I’m not going to lie, I had an inkling this might be one of those stories…

A few weeks ago, when I set about to photograph my black and gold leaf credenza makeover, I was in fits over what to hang on the wall over it, a quandary that had never been solved to my satisfaction in any of the credenza’s previous iterations.

I tried a multitude of pieces from my stock pile of thrifted art (yes, I have a closet full), but nothing was working.

I decided to head out for a quick visit to Goodwill just to see if I stumbled across anything promising – a pretty desperate call, considering how infrequently you ever seem to find exactly what you’re looking for at the thrift store. But at that point, I was determined to work with anything that was roughly the right size or color.

Well, wouldn’t you know, as soon as I walked in, I spotted two enormous framed pieces of art. At first glance, I thought they were some kid’s artwork that had been framed by proud parents.

I even saw this penciled name on both pieces and was like, “Aw, that’s cute. They wrote his name on it.”

But a closer look (or rather, a step back to evaluate them side by side) revealed that the squiggles and splotches I mistook for the work of a kindergartner actually came together to compose two beautiful forest scenes…

They were each the perfect size for over the credenza (3′ x 4′) and $8.99 each and I hate splitting up sets, so I brought them both home.

Now, if you Google “Moses art”, you’re going to find a lot of results, many of them for Grandma Moses, whose work these most certainly were not. But somehow the correct combination of keywords led me to the work of New Mexico artist Forrest Moses and I realized that the two pieces I had just purchased were his original, signed monotypes.

And when I found this Christie’s listing where one of his oil paintings sold for over $13,000 and this gallery page with a monotype listed for $9500… Well, you can imagine my reaction!

Squeals were squealed. Jumps for joy were jumped.

I was immediately writing the Buzzfeed-esque article titles in my head, “She stepped into a thrift store for 5 minutes. You won’t BELIEVE what she found for $18!”

And of course, the news headline… “Dallas woman finds art worth $XXXXX at local Goodwill!”

It’s funny. One thing those types of articles never tell you is how the person who found the art figured out how valuable it really is. I spent a lot of time searching for the answer until I went with the obvious… appraisal.

I had the art appraised online, via Value My Stuff. It’s $15 for an appraisal and they promise to get back to you within 48 hours. (And I’m not affiliated in any way with them, just FYI. I found them on the Internet just like everybody else.)

It was a totally Schrodinger’s cat nail-biter. As long as I didn’t have them appraised, they might be worth thousands of dollars. I might be sitting on a good chunk of our next down payment! It was fun to dream and talk big, but I had to pull the trigger on actually finding out, and potentially killing the cat… (er, my illusions of grandeur.)

Well.

Whomp whomp.

I can’t share the actual appraisal results with you, but let’s just say it came back as a lot less “new car” and a lot more “monthly car payment.”

In other words, in the future, I could potentially make a little chunk of cash off my initial $18 investment. But for now, I can hang onto them with a clean conscience (because I really don’t want them going anywhere!) and simply enjoy them for what they are – pretty freaking incredible pieces of original art that I scored for less than twenty bucks!

And that I absolutely love in their new places on the walls…

So that was my recent art-world adventure. Not quite the click-bait headline I thought it might be, but hey…

You can share any thrifty finds with us – whether they hail from a thrift store, Craigslist, estate sale, garage sale, side of the road, or apartment dumpster! The fun, the funny, the awesome, the odd – this hashtag party is open to all!

Feel free to use #thriftscorethursday any day of the week! We’ll be keeping up with the hashtag all week long to find our favorites for the following Thursday.

Each week, Trisha from Black and White Obsession, Cassie from Primitive and Proper, Corinna from A Designer At Home and I (plus a special weekly guest host!) will pick a few favorite thrift scores to feature! So please note that by linking up with#thriftscorethursday, you are giving us permission to share your finds via social media or on our blogs.

Please note that we can only see photos shared by public accounts, so if you have a private Instagram account and we haven’t been showering your finds with love, it’s simply because we aren’t able to see them.

We are so thrilled to have Arielle from Scotch & Nonsense joining us to guest host this week!

If you haven’t already discovered this crazy talented lady and her stunning blog, you are in for a treat! I’d recommend starting with all the eye candy in her living room tour!

There’s too much goodness to handle here! Every time I scrolled down I found a new favorite. That green onyx lamp is insane, and even better because it was free. And your art score! Amazing. Now off to read all about your credenza makeover because that thing is gorgeous.

Love those paintings, worth a million dollars or not! Does the place give you any more info on what you send them to give you an idea of why they value it how they do? I’m looking madly around my house for something that might be worth money now….this might be as hard to resist as a dog DNA test 😉

They say they based the valuation on recent auction records and they included a handy little bio about the artist… I’d love to see the results of past auctions, but that stuff is a closely kept secret, apparently 😉

I would have bought your art pieces if I had found them. Sometimes art doesn’t just speak to you, it yells. Great find.
I am loving that green onyx lamp. I would have been squealing with delight on that find.

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